


nothing on my tongue

by EllsterSMASH



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Inspired by Music, Musing, Not A Happy Ending, Pining, Romance, Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-02-17 08:50:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllsterSMASH/pseuds/EllsterSMASH
Summary: This didn't feel like the end.She wasn't particularly ready, to be honest. Her life had been spent in great swaths, not steady little bits; she could divide it into sections, count them on her fingers, and toss them to the wind. One time for growing. One time for waiting. One great adventure. One great love.He stepped away from the ritual place and took her hand. “It’s time,” he said, like the universe had told him so.It wasn't fair, but it didn't matter.





	1. let me touch your fire

**Author's Note:**

> Short snippets of solavellan, inspired by music. I write as the muse strikes me, but will reorder chapters as necessary to keep the entries chronological.
> 
> Your comments mean the world — please let me know what you think!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _i'll never leave you on the wire_   
>  _i'm cold, sick and i'm tired_   
>  _so baby[let me touch your fire](https://open.spotify.com/track/2MLurpPVA4IyIIsAKo2016?si=LK40HJhJRqyKPEughxQ7Nw)_   
> 

She was a quick study.

After hearing her story, he’d agreed to her request but had armed himself with patience and prepared for disappointment. But now? Now, he was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, she’d never been the problem at all.

It wasn’t a question of mechanics. Her willpower was fierce and her connection to the Fade as strong as any he’d seen in this age; she lacked only the ability to channel its powers properly. From what she’d told him, her magic had manifested while she slept, and her Keeper had been an inflexible, unimaginative teacher. For many years, she’d been limited to clumsy spells of destruction and raw elemental conjurations, dangerously managed by instinct alone.

Yet only a few evenings into their “arrangement,” she had already improved. He’d tried a method from the old days, a sort of shared casting. It seemed strangely intimate now, weaving one’s magic into another’s, but he had to admit that it had been incredibly effective.

He lifted his eyes to watch her through the flickering light of the campfire. She lay sprawled on her back in the grass, brow furrowed and eyes fixed, her steady hands spinning a simple white light between them.

She had beautiful hands, he thought. Sure hands that were rarely idle. Small hands with nimble fingers, the nails filed down close but still broken in places. Hands with his Mark, yes, but marked also by tiny scars and rough callouses that had nothing to do with him. Hands that had hurt a thousand times over, but had never managed to heal. Hands he could still feel between his, radiating heat in defiance of the chilled night air.

Solas looked down at his own hands and flexed the stiff joints of his fingers. They were pale. Crooked. Capable. Clean and free of scars, yet bloodied with the stubborn souls of millions no matter how often he washed.

And they ached to hold hers again.

Cursing his weakness, he stood and made his way around the warmth of the fire, closer to the blaze of her hands.

They would learn to heal. He could give her that much, at least.

“Are you ready for more?”


	2. broken over you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _i don't really care when i hear your words_   
>  _sounds so sweet that it kind of burns_   
>  _[when you're around](https://open.spotify.com/track/2MLurpPVA4IyIIsAKo2016?si=TjpPKdtpTlCHdtd0pyzE4A) _   
> 
> 
> Now with [beautiful artwork](https://ellstersmash.tumblr.com/post/173044469836/allow-me-she-hadnt-heard-solas-approach-but) by [Nipuni](http://nipuni.tumblr.com/) ♥

The aftermath was always quiet. Not quiet like peace or the eye of a storm, but quiet like winter.

Quiet like death.

Smoke rose in the distance where the bodies still burned. Their souls, if such a thing existed, would be long gone by now; soon they would be little more than bones and ash. But here, by a fresh mountain-born stream, the stench was no more than a nuisance.

This was becoming a ritual of sorts—a cleansing, a comfort. First she cleaned her weapons. The blades of her daggers, the ends of her staff. Then she removed her armor, carefully wiped the leather free of blood and viscera and laid it to dry on the rocks beside her. Next, she peeled off her linen tunic and leggings, soaking them through and scrubbing with soap and stone until the stains came loose. Those, too, were set aside.

Finally, it was her turn. With her toes in the water, she dragged a wet cloth down her shoulders and arms, between her fingers, and under her nails. One was broken and would inevitably tear; she would have to cut it later.

Her cheek stung, but from afar, as if from someone else’s wound rather than her own. She vaguely recalled a wide-swung blade, a glancing blow from a warrior’s shield, an arrow whizzing past her ear, but couldn’t remember if any of them had landed. All she could think of was her blood and theirs, blood from all those bodies, mixing and drying inseparably on her face.

Her hand shook.

“Allow me.”

She hadn’t heard Solas approach, but he spoke so softly that she barely startled. A month ago, she would have told him to go fuck himself. Two, and he would not have offered. He took the cloth and knelt down beside the stream, holding it beneath the surface until the water ran clear.

If only it could be so easy.

When he pressed it to her forehead, the fabric was surprisingly warm. His knuckles under her chin, though, were cool, and his strokes long and firm.

“Don’t say it.”

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. “Say what?”

“There wouldn’t be blood on your face,” she said, lowering her voice to imitate his, “if you would only use your magic, and fight from a distance.”

He laughed heartily, an infectious sound that washed the thought of blood and ashes from her mind. “I suppose there is no need, now that you have done it for me.”

Solas used his thumb and a corner of the cloth to clean her lips, and her skin, still damp, prickled in the cool air. His eyes searched her face as he turned it first one way, then the other. They settled on her cheek, on the cut she couldn’t remember.

“Feel free to leave a scar,” she teased, then hissed when he closed the wound.

He scoffed as if insulted, and began his spell. “No, you have quite enough of those.”


	3. moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _it's a cool night; farther my eyes_   
>  _hold the rope tight; steady that light_   
>  _[wake up](https://open.spotify.com/track/5YyQJR2fwh35Sl3igDdJqI?si=2U6y6dCkQtGwJWAAJPtQCA) _   
> 

He told himself it was the anchor he’d lost.

The anchor, that had drawn the magister’s gaze and saved them all. The anchor, buried with the rest of Haven under snow and ice and rock. The anchor, gone forever, its absence a yawning chasm between his ribs.

And he’d kept his hands occupied, his thoughts on what was left. He couldn’t remember when the wind had ceased its howling or the canvas walls had stilled, but surely it had been hours by now. Hours of quiet. Hours of waiting. Hours of hanging onto scraps of hope that _maybe she had survived._

The anchor, not her.

Then a soft and earnest voice interrupted his vigil.

“Pale, pulse faint, fluttering, fading too fast. Cold, but not a corpse. Not yet. ‘Maker’s breath, we almost left her.’” Cole turned to him. “She is here. Found. Safe.”

_Here. Found. Safe._

Impossible.

“You should go,” Cole said. “You should be there. That will help.”

The night was cloudless and dark and utterly, eerily silent. Cold starlight glinted white off the snow—a bad time for a new moon.

But there, Cullen emerged into the commons, in his arms a body with familiar dark hair and Dalish armor. Her limbs dangled lifelessly, jostled by his gait.

 _Gently!_ Solas thought. But Cullen was not a healer, and he could not know.

Hushed whispers of _Did you see?_ and _I can’t believe it_ grew, and Vivienne, ever-prepared for command, sent Cullen to her own spacious tent, barking out orders for fresh water, dry blankets, healing herbs, and candles.

Cullen laid her on the bed of furs and Mother Giselle took over, insisting Solas avert his eyes as she removed her armor and cut through her clothes. But he would not look away. Not now.

Angry bruises blossomed on her skin, black and purple, sprawling and cruel. He found himself thankful she was unconscious as his magic raged through her body, checking for fatal injury. Any such spell would be agony in her condition. Moderate hypothermia. Broken ribs. Broken fingers. A likely-broken arm. Torn ligaments, strained muscles, excessive swelling, a probable concussion. And that was just his first pass.

It was a miracle she had made it, and it would be another if they saved her.

Her, not the anchor.

A cocoon made of quilts. Candles, lit by chantry sisters and placed around her like a shrine. _To Andraste,_ he thought wryly, and could almost see her sneer. Dry towels, heated by the fire and draped across her chest.  

They cleaned her wounds and set her bones and he healed what he could. Then, his mana spent, he sat at her bedside and held her hand under the blanket, ignoring the string of visitors. Her skin beneath his fingers was pallid, cool to the touch, her lips ashen and dry.

It ached more than expected, to see her so close to lifeless. So far from herself.

He stayed and held her hand and willed it to be warm.


	4. trouble i'm in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _pretending is not enough_   
>  _i wanna feel us together_   
>  _[so i'm giving in](https://open.spotify.com/track/58NyDMjXSBQ9CG3lcvbLKi?si=JGa3StWRR9qYuUvKlIs_fw) _   
> 

He woke to the sound of soldiers and the gray light before dawn. To the smell of sweat and Dalish soap. To the press of her skin, the weight of her head on his shoulder, the steady rise and fall of his hand on her back.

To the bare leg thrown across his own, her thigh trapping his morning hardness between them.

Deep, even breaths. _Think of something else_. He attempted to slip back into the Fade, but found he did not want to. Not with her held against him just so, flesh and bone and so much bare skin, real and grounding him here.

She shifted and he bit back a moan, breath shuddering with the effort. Was this what it had come to, then? All his years of self-restraint, self-discipline, self-denial, only to have his willpower rendered useless by the accidental touch of a half-naked woman?

Solas laughed despite himself, then sobered just as suddenly when she stirred, sleepy fingertips grazing his ribs. Her touch was grasping and languid and his nerves sang in its wake. An amendment: not a woman, _this_ woman, and she could undo him with a finger.

A warning bell sounded in his skull, but was swiftly drowned out by the sound of her breathing.

She blinked her eyes open.

Her gaze took a slow explorative path up to his own. He froze, as though a sudden movement might spook her, frighten her off. As though he were a hunter with his sights set on skittish prey, except he was the one ensnared.

She did not move.

He did not want her to.

If her eyes were not so expressive, he would think her still dreaming. But she saw and she understood and she hovered there, one step from action. His heart beat out of his chest with the waiting, and the knowing she could feel it on her cheek, but as the seconds stretched out into ages he felt hers, too: beating, pulsing, mingling with his own in a syncopated staccato. Fight or flight or freeze; this was only a different sort of dangerous.

“Hello,” he said, startling at the sound of his own voice in this sanctum.

She looked at his mouth and he wondered if she might go back on her word. Might not wait for his decision. Might kiss him again. He half-hoped she would close the gap and save him the trouble of trying not to, but surely he’d reconsider in the daylight.

Her fingers twitched— _may I touch you there_ —and their hearts kept that breakneck pace. Then she smirked, a small self-conscious thing, as she unhooked her leg from his.

“Morning, I assume?”

There was no mockery in her teasing, only a warmth, a simmering suggestion.

“Yes,” and he could not help but smile, “though it is early yet. There is time, still, if you’d like to sleep.”

She considered his offer, then closed her eyes and tucked herself back in beneath his arm.

“Perhaps a while longer.”


	5. you and me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _blankets hold us tight_   
>  _whisper, please take this right_   
>  _cause we're bashful;[we'll forever burn inside](https://open.spotify.com/track/577anBvdqX2NHWVLERO6wb?si=9qPHwnHORk-8LIKFGlPiFw)_

_Stay,_ she thought, with his body warm and solid underneath her.

It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted. Not like this. Her sexual experiences, such as they were, could be counted on a hand and a half. The first was awkward limbs and budding breasts on a bed of moss, barely far enough from the aravels to call it privacy. The fourth was a dare, a conquest, an older boy who’d never so much as looked at her before. The last was unremarkable.

She had wanted to try it, wanted to please them, wanted to be wanted. Then he’d kissed her out on the balcony like he craved her touch the way she did his, and she’d tried to say it. Instead, she’d stood breathless and witless and boneless in the doorway.

Tonight, she’d try again.

 _Stay,_ she thought, with her legs astride his lap.

Their dinner sat cold and forgotten on the desk, but his taste, his scent, his fingers on her spine were sustenance enough. She could feel his arousal and his restraint, stillness at the cost of his fingernails in her flesh. The dull pain sharpened when she ground her hips against his, shuddering at the pleasure that sparked in her core.

 _Stay,_ she thought, with his breath gone heavy.

It was hard to pull away, but she had to ask him. Again, she rolled her hips and this time he _moaned_. She watched his face contort, watched as his dark brows knitted together and his cheeks flushed, lips parted and red from the work of her own eager mouth. Her eyes traced the sharp angles of him, dark and warm, almost youthful in the firelight.

“Stay,” she whispered, with her heart beating out of her chest. “Please.”

“That would be unwise.” But she wet her lips with a dart of her tongue, and his eyes flicked downward.

It was impressive, his self-restraint. Impressive and maddening.

“Unwise?” she scoffed. “If you don’t want to, just say so.”

“If only that were the case.” He sighed and brushed her hair back. “Are you certain?”

“Well, I did say please. What more do you want from me?”

The smile he gave her was cryptic, somehow suggestive and sad. “A great deal more than I should,” he said.

“Let’s just start with the basics. Do you want”—she slowly drew her tunic up and over her head, throwing it to the side—”this?”

His palms ran hungry up her naked sides. “Yes.”

She climbed off his lap and stood between his knees, sliding her smalls down her thighs until they dropped to the floor. “And this?”

His voice was lower, ragged, hoarse. “Yes.”

“Good.” She took his hand, interrupting its lazy perusal of her thigh, and led him to the bed. “How about this?” she asked, and climbed onto the too-soft mattress.

His gaze did not waver as he carefully removed his jawbone necklace and hung it on the end of the wooden frame.

_Yes._


	6. hold on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _in your skin, in your hair, i'm tangled up_   
>  _in my head, in my mind, i can't get out_   
>  _when you twist and you turn and teach me to run_   
>  _i grab and[hold on](https://open.spotify.com/track/1PkMO2tQMszcKznHFKbd84?si=1bzyXZctTsamJW1SI5GafQ)_   
> 

One touch was all it took. One touch and he caved, surged forward, pressed her back against the railing and kissed her. It wasn’t gentle, either. Certainly not the calm, comforting “welcome home” he had intended. No, instead of sweetness it was sinking. All fingers in her hair and hands twisted in his shirt and her searing skin trapped under too many clothes.

One touch was all it took, his fumbling at the strings and she had her leathers off faster than he’d imagined possible. Then it was her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Her skin, bare and all his to touch.

Solas laid her on the rug, fur by the fire and the doors flung open. Practiced fingers made short work of his clothes, then pulled him back down to her prayer-filled mouth.

Her teeth grazed his chin. He shivered.

“Turn over,” he said suddenly, sitting back on his heels.

At first she didn’t move, and he worried he'd been too demanding. But he waited. Waited until the twitch of her lips and the catch in her breath. Then he repeated himself.

“Turn over.”

This time, she obeyed. Hands and knees, peering curiously over her shoulder. He rested his length on the cleft between her cheeks; how could she take him so deep? She rocked her hips and her velvet skin slid up and down his shaft.

“I should leave you here more often,” she said, while the smirk on her face said _please_.

He reached down, felt her with a finger—wet, but not enough—then spit generously into his palm and pumped himself twice, thrice, then pushed steady and slow into the tight wet heat of her. Stared downward, watching as she took him in and in and _in_ until his thighs met the backs of hers, and she whispered an exaltation.

Breathtaking, the sight of her. Her ass, curved and perfect, and the groove of her spine stretched out above it, disappearing into a sea of dark hair still woven into a braid he'd mostly ruined.

He ran his hand up her side. Bent forward to pull the tie from her hair and steal a sideways kiss. Then a single shallow thrust and she moaned into his mouth.

Another, for the taste of it.

She asked for more and he gave it, hips snapping forward faster and harder and deeper. Her hand snaked down to chase her own end while he fucked her with abandon, face pressed tight to the shifting skin between her shoulder blades. He held out long enough for her to climb and peak and come clenching around his cock, before his own orgasm crashed through him and spilled steaming into her.

As they collapsed together in a mess of skin and sweat and sex, he found he loved her somehow more than when she'd left. Then he buried the danger of that discovery deep, next to his duty, and ran his fingers through the tangles of her hair.


	7. anyone else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _oh my blood once was my own_   
>  _but in one touch you made it yours_   
>  _[what have you done?](https://open.spotify.com/track/3Yc3DI66pY5AVHmfgYQtZh?si=sZqiabk5QF2db0Q5yY0sdw) _   
> 

He had spent the evening sipping fine wine and listening for whispers, using his relative invisibility for the Inquisition's benefit. And for his own. Yet even as he watched the peacocks posture and palaver, his eyes passed unaffected over the deep reds and blues, the lace, the rich patterns, and the heavy fabrics. Instead, they leapt toward every glint of gold, hoping for a glimpse of rich dark hair, swept up to bare a slender neck and graceful shoulders.

Understandably, her task consumed much of her time, and took her far from his shadowed corner. Yet she had made it a point to ask how he was enjoying his night—and to make sure he’d been treated well. Despite his pointed ears, she had meant, but did not bother to say.

She had passed him twice more before the sun had set. Each time, he had watched her slip down the hall from one gluttonous grasp to another. Each time, he had resisted the urge to take her by the wrist and pull her close. To draw her to his chest. To bury his nose in the curve of her jaw. To inhale the curious blend of expensive perfume and her own intoxicating aroma.

From there, his fantasies diverged. He could ask her to dance. Lead her through these new and unimaginative steps, then introduce a few of his own. “Let them see,” he’d tell her. “Let them watch.” And oh, they would watch. She would have been a sight, dancing in Arlathan.

But his baser instincts drew him down another path, one in which he forgot the wine and the music and the nobler purpose of the evening. He was already drunk on the sweetness of her lips. He could already feel the heat of her against him, his hands dividing fabric from her silk-soft skin, a fist in her hair. He could already see her green eyes heavy-lidded for him—and him alone.

“Let them see,” he’d tell her. “Let them watch.”

There. She entered from the garden, though he had not seen her through the window, and smiled demurely as she approached. Driven to distraction by his own imagination, he could resist no longer. He stepped into her path and she slowed as if for a moment of private council.

"You are lovely."

It was nothing. A single hushed moment, a low murmur in passing that raised the blood to her cheeks before she inevitably slipped away to resume her part in this game of threats and liars. Given the setting, their nearness was hardly intimate, but as his fingers brushed her hip and hers drifted toward his thigh, the tension between them hung heavy in the air and lingered long after she’d gone.

An agreement, unspoken but understood:

_Later._

Later, then. And in the meantime, he would simply have to content himself with wine and whispers and wanting.


	8. the yawning grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _oh, you fool_   
>  _there are rules_   
>  _[i am coming for you](https://open.spotify.com/track/4P21W3eMiIVS9ON4ctlxnb?si=WpQp1_GHReK6hZID69mLSg) _   
> 

The air felt like penance. Every breath like glass in her lungs and she breathed in deep.

_Live well, da’len._

The statue sat in a clearing, as they often did, holding vigil over clans long-since gone from this haunted, hollow place. There was another just like it outside their camp at Wycome. Hand to frozen chest, she circled him slowly. Shoulder to flank and around, rough dry rock catching at her fingertips until she stood before his empty eyes.

Fen’Harel. The dread wolf. Hunter. Watchman. Protector.

She spit into the snow.

_Useless piece of shit._

She hadn’t believed in the gods for a long, long time, but that seemed unimportant just now. Because this one, this _pretender_ here in front of her had failed her friends, her family, her people, _his people_ , people who had trusted him to keep them safe and then he had let their murderers walk right under his nose to kill them within their own fucking borders.

A gesture, and a flame was lit in her palm, pooling and growing and whispering of rage and destruction, it swallowed him whole yet it did not touch him. Vacant stare and ears perked, always listening, not even scorched black.

_Traitor._

She rained fire down upon them both, snow hissing and melting around her; a few branches caught and smoked and burned, but still he sat on his pedestal, unbroken, unaffected.

_Deceiver._

When her mana was spent, she put her blades to his hide. But they were cold, brittle, and when they broke against it she threw them, ruined, aside to attack him with her fists. Skin and flesh and knuckles on stone and the gray began to bleed. Something snapped; maybe a bone. She had been numb for hours.

_Fraud._

She screamed—accusing, condemning, cursing without language or letter. Then, fury echoing exhausted off the red-infested cliffs of the Emprise, she knelt before the statue in an icy pool of her own making, and wondered when exactly the dread wolf had caught her scent.

And when, exactly, she had become so very like him. For it was her foolishness, not his treachery, that had brought her people to ruin. And it was their trust in her, not him, that had been their undoing.

Of course he’d caught her scent. She had left him a trail of blood a mile wide to follow.

_They are coming for us._

Not da’len.

_Harellan._


	9. alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _can we go back before you go?_   
>  _i don't want to be_   
>  _don't want to be[alone](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Gm772sY4qk3J8VZLtEKHI?si=uLySJ1o2S5W60gE14zdprQ)_   
> 

“Sure you wanna do this, boss?”

Sure?

She had been sure that he loved her. Truth in his face, his voice, his hands, then he’d turned away. Told her it was done. Fended her off like a plague.

She had been sure he’d change his mind. Find her at the inn and take her in his arms, take it back, take her home. Tell her again how perfect she was, but two nights full of liquor and loneliness had proved her wrong once again.

Now she was sure of nothing. Not this plan. Not their survival. Not even the promise of a violent catharsis. Absolutely nothing but the itching, aching anger screaming beneath her skin.

Far above her, the dragon screamed, and it left her ears ringing. The air around the beast hummed, its electric charge snapping bright and hot off its scales and leaving blackened scorch marks in the green. Lightning on land; a storm made flesh; a wild, lovely thing. And its eyes gleamed with purpose: murder, or hunger, or terror, or indignation.

Hopefully, more of the first one, as she had no room for compassion today.

They approached, practiced but cautious, looking to her for the signal and when she gave it, the dance began. Her magic was barely a distraction for the beast, to keep its gaze from Sera's true aim and Bull's pure force and Cassandra's sharp blade. She did her best to keep their barriers up, but her mana reserves ran low more than once.

In her defense, they were lucky she’d managed to learn the spell at all.

The fight lasted less than twenty adrenaline-fueled minutes that felt like seconds and days all at once. Then the dragon, exhausted, overreached.

Cassandra did not waste a moment. There, her sword plunged deep into its heart.

A fatal blow.

The dragon raged against the end as all living creatures do with their last bit of breath, but the battle was won, or would be in a matter of moments. Athi walked away as the beautiful beast came thundering down behind her.

“Lavellan!”

Like their prey, like a fool, she had let her guard down too soon. One final thrash of its tail caught her side, throwing her down and pinning her beneath its weight. She hit the ground unprepared. Uncontrolled. Head and shoulder and hip to the hard-packed dirt; surely her bones would be in pieces. Ears ringing, vision blurry, air too thick to suck it into her lungs. All she knew was her arm, and her hand connected to it, and the black burned grass stretched out in front of her toward infinity. She flexed her fingers.

Blood under her nails—maybe hers, maybe not.

She didn't care.

It didn't matter.

She was just so very, very tired.


	10. bare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _i've spent too long blind_   
>  _and now i'm trying to hurt you_   
>  _but you've seen me[bare](https://open.spotify.com/track/3uvsVUrAaGQJCTEUR1S3Sx)_   
> 

It tore her from a dead sleep. Carved into her dreams like a searing hot knife and she woke up startled and sobbing.

The Anchor was getting worse. It sputtered angrily in her palm and she clenched her fist to keep from crying out. Her nails were short. Blunt, but strong. They would leave marks, but Skyhold was quiet and her windows flung open to let in the stars. She would not loose her pain on the winds only to have it be caught and spread by whispers through the halls of this keep. 

Green light leaked from between her fingers, flaring as a fresh wave rolled up her arm and crested in her shoulder. It overcame her, and she vomited onto the floor.

She had put this off for too long.

It happened twice more on her way to his room. Twice more, she bit back her screams. Twice more, her stomach turned. And to think, after Crestwood she’d been grateful for the distance. But at last, she stood outside his door and knocked.

It opened within seconds.

“Inquisitor.”

She tried to say the words: _Help me. Fix it. Make it stop._

But Solas did not wait for her to speak. He took her hand in his as he had so many times before. One below—thumb hooked with hers, fingers on her wrist—the other above. Tears of relief spilled onto her cheeks when he pressed the soothing spell into her skin.

“You should have come to me,” he said quietly.

“I did.”

“Athi—”

“Don't." Her voice was clipped. Shaky, like her limbs, her strength sapped by the night's attacks. “I may require your skills, but I don't want your concern. So you don't get to lecture me on taking care of myself or hanging back in a fight or reconsidering my strategy or ‘utilizing my unique power to enact change.’ Or this. Not anymore. ”

It was unfair, and ungracious, and unkind. And it cut him deeply. His mask slipped, only for the briefest of moments, but it was long enough for her to see underneath. Long enough for her to see the dark circles under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders before they straightened.

“You regret it," she said. "Leaving.”

He glared at her, cool and stern and telling, and took his hands from hers. “No, it was the right decision.”

“Yet you regret it.” She got up to leave but stopped at the door, turned, and met his eyes for the first time in weeks. “I know the feeling well.”

She left him, left his tired eyes and heavy shoulders and curiously broken heart, and did not sleep the rest of the night.


	11. we are infinite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> > _and the colors_   
>  _drift from you_   
>  _[into me](https://open.spotify.com/track/0PsCdWEczdow0ZYgmRd1Mq?si=geBINfG0QSyL6tPY_24aXw) _   
> 

This didn’t feel like the end.

She wasn’t particularly ready, to be honest. Her life had been spent in great swaths, not steady little bits; she could divide it into sections, count them on her fingers, and toss them to the wind. One time for growing. One time for waiting. One great adventure. One great love.

He stepped away from the ritual place and took her hand. “It’s time,” he said, like the universe had told him so.

It wasn’t fair, but it didn’t matter.

She had tried to stop him, had schemed and pleaded and fought and failed. She hadn’t found another way. Everyone they both knew was dead. Everything was lost. There was no going back. There was only this inescapable sacrifice and the sliver of hope it offered.

There was only the end of the world, and at the center of it all, the two of them.

So they waited above quiet battlefields with their broken hearts, hoping at least to catch a glimpse of the next one, together.

“We could have been happy,” she said, and searched the unknowable horizon. “If you could have been content. I would have helped you mend your clothes and warmed you at night and kissed you every single morning. We could have seen every vile and wild and beautiful place in this world, you and I. We could have had—”

“I know,  _vhenan_.” His voice was heavy, and she looked up to see tears spilling down his cheeks.

He made no attempt to hide his sorrow, and nothing could alleviate hers. But still she fit herself into that space between his shoulders, and he cried into her hair, and they grieved what had been irretrievably lost, together.

Then the air rumbled, everywhere, all at once.

Her eyes burned and her skin went cold. She stayed in his arms—not safe, but satisfied—as they watched, and breathed, together.

Around and above and below and within them, shards of the universe cracked into being, wavering like water, shattering like glass. The sky rained in broken pieces, pooling pure light in every dark place and leaving a shimmering radiance in its wake. For the briefest, sweetest moment, this new world was bathed in full color.

And the last thing they knew was each other. Ancient and new, whole and broken, pride and hope and love.

Ephemeral and infinite.


End file.
